


once upon a time (we learned how to fly)

by sleep_is_good_books_are_better



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Brienne of Tarth (mentioned) - Freeform, F/M, Fluff, Jonsa Secret Santa 2018, Pre-Relationship, Recovery, figure skating!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 14:57:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17246255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleep_is_good_books_are_better/pseuds/sleep_is_good_books_are_better
Summary: Because the first step is always the hardest.





	once upon a time (we learned how to fly)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Darkmagyk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkmagyk/gifts).



Sansa can already feel the cold beginning to seep into her bones as she finishes lacing up her skate. A few months ago, she probably would have shivered and pulled her jacket tighter around her, but now, after almost nine months off of the ice, she just wants to bury herself in the feeling. The cold is comforting, somehow. It feels a bit like coming home. It’s barely seven in the morning, and the sun is just beginning to peak through the tops of the evergreens that surround Winterfell Skating Arena. The sunrise has tinted the whole sky a soft shade of pink, and, as she walked from her car to the rink, breathing in the smell of pine, Sansa could almost pretend that she wasn’t scared.

She hasn’t told any of her family that she’s here. Robb’s gone anyway, off on an away game down in the Neck, and Arya’s either busy training or with that new boyfriend of hers. It wasn’t as if it was at all difficult for Sansa to slip away – her family all have better things to do with their time than keep an eye on their twenty year old daughter and/or sister who should really be able to take care of herself by now. 

Well, Sansa should have been able to do a lot things on her own by now, like maybe notice the damn red flags that covered Joffery Baratheon like the sequins on his costumes, but here she is anyway. So maybe it shouldn’t be all that surprising that she’s so slow. 

She shakes her head as she moves on to the other skate. She can practically hear Brienne, her physical therapist, speaking to her, as if the other woman were in the room with her. 

_Just get on the ice. That’s enough of a first step. Don’t push yourself too hard or too fast. It’s ok._

Then she remembers: _Recovery is a process, not a destination. It’ll happen at its own pace. That’s ok, too._

Maybe if she thinks it enough, she’ll eventually believe it. 

Despite the early hour, there’s at least one person on the ice already. She can’t make out who it is – all she can see are his things, propped up against a column in the middle of the warming room, and the paths he’s cutting across the ice through the window. She has a hunch who it is, but to put that hunch into words would be to give voice to that fluttery feeling in her stomach she’s not quite ready to acknowledge. Whoever he is, he’s a study in contrast, what with his black shirt and his black pants and his black skates and his black hair stark against the white ice, and he knows what he’s doing, too. Since she’s gotten here, she’s watched him skate through forms full of choctaws, spread eagles, and even a few twizzles. 

For a moment, Sansa hesitates in the middle of looping her laces around the first hook as a sudden thought strikes her. What if he recognizes her? It’s not as if Winterfell has a shortage of skaters, but she’s Sansa Stark. Once upon a time, her name was put in a line with the same greats as Rhaegar Targaryan and Ashara Dayne. Once upon a time, people talked about her as if she was going to be the best in the world. 

That was before King’s Landing, before Littlefinger, before Joffery. 

That was before she faltered, and then she fell, and everyone found another rising star to pin their hopes and dreams on. Before she picked up the last remaining bits of her dignity and disappeared up north to the family she had left behind all those years ago. 

She’s wound the laces so tightly around her hands that her fingers are turning white. The thought of that someone out there on the ice seeing her, knowing her, is almost enough to drive her to pack up and leave to try again some other day. But no. She can feel the ice under her blades already, and it’s been too damn long for her to turn back now. She grits her teeth as she resumes tying up her laces. The whole point to coming here so early was to have the rink to herself, so that she can fall all over herself in peace. Doesn’t this asshole, whoever he is, recognize that he’s ruining her plans? By the time she’s finished with the laces, she’s bound them so tightly that it hurts, and she has to untie them and start over. It’s been so long that the memory of exactly how to tweak the laces so it doesn’t pinch has left her fingers, and that scares her. When Sansa pulls the laces tight at the base of her ankle, the terrycloth burns against the outside of her pinkie, which has grown smooth and soft in the months off of the ice. She remembers the first time she reached for the callouses there to find them gone, how shocking it was to realize that she couldn’t remember how long it had been since she had last laced up her skates. 

She can hear Brienne again. _Don’t worry about that. They’ll come back with time, like everything else._

No, not like everything else, Sansa thinks, glaring through her leggings at the tape that still winds its way around her knee. 

Sansa Stark, the great Songbird of Winterfell, will likely never jump again. 

This time, it isn’t her physical therapist who comes to her, but her mother, the feeling of lips on every bruise after practice. _Remember, you have to walk before you can run._

Sansa stands, finally ready to go. She can feel her knees shaking as she makes for the ice, tugging on her gloves as she walks. Her body is ready for this, she knows, understands that there’s no way in hell Brienne would let her even look at an ice rink if she didn’t think that it was safe for Sansa. But is the rest of her? 

When she pushes aside the flaps between the warming room and the rink proper, the cold air blasting her in the face feels like a wake-up call, like freezing water in the middle of a sleepless night. She takes a deep breath and does her best to stride into the rink as if she belongs there. Once she gets to the door that opens to the ice, she stops for a minute, bending down to remove her hard guards. That’s why she doesn’t see him, at first, and she’s so busy trying to breath that she misses the telltale sound of blades coming to a stop in front of her. 

“Sansa?” 

_Oh, shit,_ she thinks. Her head snaps up, and in that split second, she can’t decide if she wants to finish taking her guards off to skate or slam them back on as quickly as possible, so the hard guard in her hand jerks off of her blade so suddenly it’s a miracle she doesn’t cut herself. Oh, no, she thinks. This is it, this is her worst nightmare come to life, why didn’t she just leave, this is-

_This_ is apparently Jon Snow. 

She can feel her eyes going wide as she takes him in. He’s never been huge, but he’s stocky and strong, and she could recognize those black curls anywhere. She’s known Jon Snow all her life, since they were both children doing loops around stuffed direwolves on the ice. He’s a cousin once-removed, or something, the third child of the great Rhaegar Targaryan and Lyanna Stark, who herself was Sansa’s father’s cousin. Both of his parents were dead by the time he was six, however, and it was decided it would be better for him to grow up with his mother’s family than his father’s, most of whom were notoriously unstable. She also knows him from the last few months, when she’d come to the rink just to feel the cold, and watch him trace out elegant curves on the ice. She never spoke to him then, not once, but she knows that he saw her just as she recognized him. 

While she was in King’s Landing, she didn’t follow ice dance closely, not really – Coach Baelish called it an “unnecessary distraction” – but she remembers hearing about the news, reading about an up-and-coming dance team being torn apart by an unfortunate tragedy, though it would be a few years until she looked into it closely enough to recognize Jon’s name. 

He was sixteen, when Ygritte, his partner who he had been skating with since he was seven, was killed in a car accident. 

In the present, Jon tilts his head at her, and Sansa realizes that he’s still waiting for an answer. “Jon.” She forces a smile to her face as she straightens. “It’s…” She searches for something that doesn’t sound like a complete lie. “It’s good to see you, too.” 

He nods, though he still looks a little unsure of himself. Sansa can’t blame him. She wasn’t cruel to him growing up, not exactly, but she didn’t do anything to endear herself to him either, not like Arya or Robb did. She was going to be the best figure skater ever, she had told herself, and she didn’t have time to waste with some distant cousin who didn’t even _jump._

Now, looking at him, how his shoulders have curved inward as if he’s expecting her to rebuff him again, like they’re twelve or something, Sansa feels her stomach fill with remorse. How much did she toss aside, she wonders, in pursuit of a dream that didn’t even matter in the end? 

He nods again, as if deciding something to himself, before speaking. “It’s good to see you, too.” His voice is all thick Northern burrs and familiar comfort, and Sansa feels her shoulders relax, just a bit. She bends down again, removing her second hard guard. Jon steps aside to give her room, and she takes a deep breath. 

She steps on to the ice gingerly, carefully, as if her skates could slide out from under her at any moment. She strokes forward, but suddenly the world is tilting, sliding, and her hand shoots out to the wall to steady herself. 

_Pathetic,_ she thinks. _Not nine months ago you were one of the best skaters out there, and now you can barely stroke a few meters before panicking?_

She wishes Jon would leave her be, go back to whatever he was training, if only so that she could be left to her humiliation. But he doesn’t. Instead, he skates a few feet ahead of her, backwards, watching as she slowly makes a turn around the rink. He glances at her hand, at the death grip she has on the boards, and, in her head, Sansa is begging him to keep his mouth shut. 

He doesn’t, because when has Sansa ever gotten that lucky? “Is this, um… is this your first time on the ice since…” his voice trails off, as if he’s just now realized that maybe reminding her of the fall that put her here isn’t the best idea. 

Now they’re next to the away bench, and Sansa tries to pull her hand off of the wall as she nods. 

She makes it three strokes before the world starts spinning, and she has to put her hand back. 

Jon just watches, silently, and she wishes more than anything he would just leave her be. By the Seven, if she can barely do this without panicking, how is she ever going to compete again? 

She tries once more to skate on her own and is met with no more success than the last two times. She can feel tears of frustration start to prick at the back of her eyes, and she _hates_ herself for it. She tastes blood as she bites the inside of her lip. 

“Here.” She looks up, and there’s Jon again. He’s standing next to her, and he’s holding out a single, ungloved hand. “Let me help.”

She wants to say no, at first. She wants to snap at him, tell him she can do it herself, but she can’t, clearly, if she could, she wouldn’t be here, and she remembers Brienne’s voice, from one of those bad days where it felt like nothing was going right. 

_It’s ok to ask for help sometimes, Sansa. No one gets better on their own._

“Sansa, let me help you.” He smiles, all dimples and warm grey eyes, and something hard deep inside Sansa’s chest melts, just a little bit. 

That fluttery feeling is back, from all those days she sat high enough in the stands that he was just a black blur against the ice. She puts her hand in his, he tugs her away from the wall, and just like that, she feels like she can fly again.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy belated Holidays, Darkmagyk! I'm sorry the work turned out so tame (I asked my muse for Jonsa and this is what it gave me) but I hope a bit of fluff helps you end 2018 on a good note!


End file.
